THE Duchess of Cambridge has created the trend of "mawbrushing" which sees celebrity mums put themselves in every day situations and then distort reality, making if far more attractive than what it is for anyone else.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, depart The Lindo Wing with their newborn son (Image: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

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THE pictures of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, landing in St Lucia after a journey of 8500 miles are undoubtedly cute. Flattering. Carefree.

But dear readers, don’t let them fool you. It’s just the start of a new and disturbing trend – Kate has been “mawbrushed”. And yes, I might have made that word up.

Mawbrushing is like its wrinkle-free relation, airbrushing, but it takes mothers, puts them in every day situations and then distorts reality, making it far more attractive than it is for the rest of us.

Catalogues have been doing it for years with images of the wholesome, beautifully-dressed family, all glossy hair, beaming smiles and clean wellies, as they stroll up the side of a windswept hill.

In reality, the teenager would be texting her pals moaning that she was #BORED. Her little brother would have stepped in something and be demanding to go home to the dung-free surroundings of his PlayStation.

Dad would be striding ahead, ignoring them all because they were spoiling his Sunday hike.

And mum? She’d probably be dreaming of the spa voucher she got for Christmas that she hasn’t had time to use yet. In October.

Now that we have a new baby royal, the mawbrushing will be relentless. So let’s just set the record straight. Arriving at a holiday destination after a long-haul journey in the company of a small child, doesn’t look like that. Ever.

When my boys were two and three I took them to Los Angeles on a flight that made Samuel L Jackson’s infamous air flick, Snakes On A Plane, look like a walk in an airborne park.

The nightmare began when we realised the children were too small to see the communal TVs.

This was in the days before iPads and laptops, so for the next 12 hours I drew pictures. I told stories. We played 45,323 games of I Spy – a miraculous feat when the only answers are airplane, sky, clouds and “grumpy man in front because you keep kicking his chair”.

Low the Younger managed to tip his spaghetti dinner over me and splatter me with his custard spoon.

Both stains combined with the spray of his apple juice to make my white T-shirt look like the “before” item in a soap powder advert.

Shari with the young men in her life around the time they went to America (Image: Paul Chappells/Daily Record)

And just in case you’re reading this while eating your lunch, I won’t go into details about the point, halfway there, when we discovered that Low the Elder had a pre-disposition to air-sickness.

By the time we landed, I’d morphed into a deranged children’s television presenter – wide-eyed, speaking to everyone in a sing-song voice, punctuated with choruses of Old McDonald Had a Farm.

Husband and I had begun the journey blissfully happy. We disembarked looking like extras from the Thriller video, clutching plastic bags, two small children and on the brink of divorce.

That’s what travelling long haul with young children really looks like.

In the meantime, any parent of a toddler who feels pressure to skip off a flight looking like Kate needs to remember the pertinent factors.

The Duchess has an entourage, access to first-class travel and never leaves home without packing the most effective of all the parenthood perks.